Vojvodina - a region based on the Serbian ethnicity and its denial

Abstract

The issue of regionalism and the autonomy of certain areas is mainly related to the ethnic composition of the population. The idea of the autonomy of Vojvodina as a Serbian region in the Habsburg Monarchy was created back in 1690. It came into being 150 years later by the decision of the 1848 May Assembly. In a significantly different form, it lasted ten years as the Serbian Voivodship and Temisvar (Timisoara) Banat. In the next fifty years, a autonomous Serbian Vojvodina was just a dream. At the end of World War I the areas of Vojvodina, on the basis of the right to self-determination, entered the Kingdom of Serbia and thus became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, i.e. Yugoslavia. The idea of the autonomy of Vojvodina was then discarded. Some liberal politicians, supported by the Croats, tried to restore it in the interwar period but this option did not receive any support of voters at the elections. The illegal Communist Party politically promoted the idea of the autonomy of Vojvodina in a federalized Yugoslavia, which was achieved during World War II. At the end of the war, the autonomous Vojvodina remained part of Serbia, and according to the 1974 Constitution, it became a part of federal Yugoslavia. During the disintegration of Yugoslavia, the autonomy of Vojvodina within Serbia was preserved but recently, after the so-called democratic changes of 2000, domestic and foreign (EU and NATO) political engagement in Serbia has been more directed towards the greater autonomy of Vojvodina, and even its separation from Serbia, despite the two-thirds Serbian majority living in the Province.